


Methos Bound

by KickAir 8P (KickAir8P)



Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: Bad Fic, Gen, Unbeta'd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-01-31
Updated: 2001-01-31
Packaged: 2017-10-14 15:46:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/150886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KickAir8P/pseuds/KickAir%208P
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cassandra's revenge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Methos Bound

**Author's Note:**

> One of my very first fanfics, and honestly one I'd rather forget. But it's up on Usenet's alt.tv.highlander.creative, so I might as well archive it here.
> 
> After watching HL:Endgame I'd discovered what fanfic was (bless!), and this was the first one I posted. On top of several other problems, I thoroughly screwed up Methos' characterization -- consider yourselves warned.

“I killed Silas!  I _**liked**_ Silas!”

“Now I'm supposed to _**forgive**_ you?!”

 _I knew she was behind me, knew I should move.  It didn’t matter, I couldn’t stop sobbing._

“Cassandra!”

 _Silas, my brother.  Oh, Silas....._

“You want him to live?”

“Yes. I want him to live.”

 _MacLeod, you’re supposed to hate me now.  What are you doing?_

“Cassandra! I WANT HIM TO LIVE!”

 _I deserve this, MacLeod.  Not that that matters – I still want to live, even now.  If I could just stop sobbing....._

The dull pain in my chest turned sharp.  I looked down, and saw my own sword sticking out.  _Silas’s blood on it, I can’t bleed, I don’t have a heart....._

“Fine, he’ll live.  But I’m not letting him go!”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The first thing that hit me was the smell, like a sewer.  The second was that I couldn’t move.  The third was that I couldn’t see.  And the fourth was that I was in warm water up to my chest.

Nothing had been tied over my eyes.  I could blink okay, so I probably hadn’t been blinded.  There just wasn’t any light.

My legs were spread and embedded in something from mid-thigh on down – I couldn’t even wiggle my toes.  The same for my arms, spread straight out to either side.  Aside from that, I was completely vulnerable – especially my neck.  My wrists and ankles throbbed with a dull ache that became a screaming agony when I tried to move them.

Okay, my arms and legs were embedded in cement.  There was a spike through each wrist and ankle, also embedded in the cement.  The warm “water” had things floating in it, bumping into me as it flowed past.  It was also the source of the sewer smell:  raw sewage.  And now it was up to my collarbone.

Cassandra’s Revenge.  Part One?  Or was she just going to leave me down here forever?  The last thing she promised was that I’d live.  And here was provided everything I needed to live, and more.  Air.  Water, if I wasn’t too fussy.  Even nourishment, if I was really desperate.  Did MacLeod know where I was, or did he just let her take my corpse on her word?  And did it matter?

The sewage was rising fast, over my chin already.  I put my head back for a few more breaths of the fetid air.  At least it was warm, although that made the smell worse.  Of course, even in the summer, most sewers are cold.  For it to be warm down here I had to be near the equator – I wouldn’t even be able to tell when the seasons changed.

One last breath, and it was over my head, or at least the part that mattered.  Now all I had to do was hold my breath till I died, to override my body’s desperate reflex to breath anything, at any cost.  I didn’t even look at him as I took his head.  Don’t think about that.  Did he look back at me, did he know I had him then?  Don’t think about that, don’t move.....couldn’t help it, I was struggling, thrashing back and forth against the cement holding me.  Silas, oh, my brother, you were the best of us, with your childlike joy in everything.  An innocent.  A murderous innocent, no worse than the rest of us, better.....Silas, I’m sorry—

I blew the dead air out and breathed the putrid water into my lungs, swallowing it, choking on it—

Air!  I breathed, choked out sewage, breathed again.  They say drowning is a peaceful way to die.  They’re right, if you only count the last few seconds.  As they say, getting there is half the fun.  I chuckled aloud, then cut it off as I heard it echo on the walls around me.  Just because I couldn’t feel her meant nothing – there could be a microphone down here, even an infrared camera.  Should I beg?  Probably too soon, I should drown a few more times before I “broke”.  Of course, that presumed that she was listening.  Still, no harm playing to my possible audience.

So I drowned every once in a while – I stopped trying to keep count early on, there was no point.  There didn’t seem to be any pattern to the timing of the water’s rise and fall, although it never stayed down long enough for me to die of thirst.  And I had no idea how long I stayed dead each time.

There was never a glimmer of light, but I wasn’t alone – the rats came to nibble on me frequently.  They never stayed very long, I don’t think they liked the taste of Immortal flesh – I was a bit insulted by that, surely I tasted better than most of the things down here.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

She was clever, Cassandra – she’d combined the best elements of sensory deprivation with a set of passive tortures.  She hadn’t learned that from me – subtlety was not my strong point during the time we spent together.  Was this all she was planning?  Not that it wasn’t enough, but it could just be a warm-up for something up close and personal.  With a bit of a shock, I realized I was cheered by that thought, of seeing someone else again, even her, even if she came to subject me to unspeakable torments.  This was not good.

No way to know how long I’d been down here, never mind how long I would be down here.  I wondered what MacLeod told Joe.  A pleasant fiction, I hope.  Good old Joe, mortal man – are you still alive?  If you are, you’ll be dead and dust by the time I get out of here, if I get out of here.....I wish I’d said goodbye to you.  I liked you Joe, I hope MacLeod didn’t let you worry about me.

The sewage closed in over me again, I drowned again.  Sorry, Joe.....

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 **“Damn you!  I had a _life!_ ”**

Yes, I had screamed that, my throat was still raw from it.  What the hell was I thinking?  If she was listening, that did not fit with the tormented-then-repentant show I intended to put on.  Maybe my subconscious thought I was leaving it a little late, but to start with that?

Better wait through a few more drownings before anything else, don’t want to seem eager.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Alive again.  As soon as I stopped spitting up sewage, I started laughing.  I couldn’t stop laughing until the next time I drowned.  I don’t need to pretend to go crazy, it’s already happening.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Alexa, I’m glad you never knew.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Damn it!  It was wrong, yes, but not **_that_** wrong!  Everybody who could was doing it, we were just better at it than anyone else!  No one thought it was evil to slaughter women and children, you protected your own by killing the enemy, down to the babes in arms!  It’s even in the damn Bible, but does anybody look?  No!  Just blame the five-thousand-year-old guy, he’s a handy scapegoat!

Kronos was right – I should have killed you.  So what if I let Kronos take you, he had the right!  We shared everything, and you were just a slave!  You were lucky I let you live!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I can still remember their faces, especially the children.  Not all of them, it was over a thousand years of killing, but I remember enough.  Tens of thousands of people died in agony because we were having fun.  Civilizations might’ve started and flourished if we hadn’t been rampaging through any given area every few decades.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Forget civilizations.  Each individual killing is its own offense, its own hole in the fabric of what should have been.  Each person who would’ve laughed, and maybe loved, and lived just a little longer except a marauder put a sword through him.  Kronos and Caspian and Silas, they would’ve done it anyway?  They would’ve done it with one less!  I could’ve said no!  Kronos would’ve taken my head?  He would’ve tracked me down and killed me?  I got away when I chose to, I could’ve done it a thousand years earlier!

When I gave it up, it wasn’t because it was wrong – it was because I was bored!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“All the lonely people, where do they all belong?  
All the lonely corpses, where do they all belong?  
All the lonely grave-dirt, where do they – where does it – where do they – ah, shit.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

She was learning to be a healer.  When I enslaved her, I killed all the people she would’ve saved in her Immortal life, all the people who would’ve been saved by the medical advances that would’ve come faster if an Immortal healer had been looking for them.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Dust in the wind, all we are is dust in the wind.....”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I cried.  I couldn’t stop, except for sleep and for death, and I started again as soon as I woke.  I cried for all my dead, and I cried because there wasn’t enough time before the heat-death of the universe to cry for all my dead, even if I remembered them all.

Eventually, I stopped crying.  Sometimes I started again.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I came alive and spewed the water from my lungs in a well-practiced motion, and felt it:  another Immortal nearby.  I couldn’t help it, I gasped.  It had to be her, no one else would have any reason to come down here – “Cassandra?”

A single clink echoed, impossible to tell from where:  steel on cement.  She could’ve come down here just to take my head, despite her promise.  It didn’t matter – I had one thing to say to her, and I would say it even if they were my last words:

“I’m sorry.”

Silence.  Then, “Hmmm?”  Her voice.

“I’m sorry.  What I did was wrong.  The looting, the raping, the killing, enslaving the survivors.....enslaving you, body and soul, and then betraying you.”  I took a breath.  “I don’t expect it to matter to you, or change what you’re going to do, but I had to tell you:  I deeply regret it, all of it.  I’m sorry.”

Silence.  I waited, empty of expectations.  Whatever happened, would happen, it wasn’t up to me.  I hoped she found some peace from it.....

“There’s plastique embedded in the cement holding you.  I’m going to blow it.  I doubt the shrapnel will decapitate you, but I don’t know.  After that, you’re free to go, if you can.”

I was stunned.  She was letting me go?  “Thank y—”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I was alive again, laying in slime a few inches deep, alone again.  She must’ve diverted the sewage from this area to keep me from staying drowned from the leftover cement weighing me down.  I was able to struggle free of most of the cement and spikes, except for my left foot, which was encased in an impromptu cement boot.

I made my way slowly to the surface, stopping sometimes to rest, and toward the end to let my eyes adjust to the light.  I finally pushed aside a grate and climbed up onto a sidewalk, collapsing there to let someone notice the naked, slime-encrusted foreigner with one foot embedded in a cement block.

Before they got me into the ambulance, I got a glimpse of a newspaper stand.  It had been one year.


End file.
